The Best Quantum Mechanics Lecture You’ll Ever See (Video)

In a stunt worthy of James Franco, Columbia professor Emlyn Hughes bared all for a strange performance art piece during a Frontiers Quantum Mechanics class on Monday, New York Daily News reports. The lecture opened with Professor Hughes “stripping down to his underwear as images of 9/11 and the Holocaust showed on a screen behind him.”

And it just gets better from there…

“Hughes remained in the fetal position on the floor as two people dressed as ninjas blindfolded two stuffed animals and impaled one of them with a sword…The students at first encouraged Hughes to dance to the music that was playing as he stripped, but then were dismayed when footage of the Twin Towers collapsing and wartime Nazi Germany began rolling…”

The students were understandably confused, even when Hughes attempted to explain his performance. “In order to learn quantum mechanics, you have to strip to your raw, erase all the garbage from your brain, and start over again,” he said. “Um, nothing you’ve learned in your life up til now is in any way going to help prepare you for this. . . . I’ve been tasked with the impossible challenge of teaching you quantum mechanics in one hour.”

As Professor Hughes has not responded to various press requests, we can only assume that his mission was not successful.